Staying Organized During Online and Blended Learning
Has this ever happened to you? Your child has a large homework assignment or project due tomorrow. He has yet to start. Worse, he can’t even give you many specifics on what the assignment is supposed to be. You spend about half an hour searching through his backpack, which is full of loose papers (some of which seem to be past homework assignments that were never turned in…), broken pencils, toys, and perhaps a moldy orange or banana, but you cannot find the sheet from the teacher that lays out those needed details for the assignment. Curiously, his glasses that he wears only in school do not seem to be in the backpack. At that point, you end up having to reach out to the parents of another student in the class. You’re both exhausted. But he still hasn’t even started working on the assignment… If you’ve had this experience, or perhaps your child has often failed to bring home textbooks, forgotten to turn in assignments that he had completed, or left multiple jackets, lunchboxes, hats, and, yes, even pairs of prescription glasses at school, you may welcome online or blended learning. Indeed, there are certain advantages. All homework assignments are online, so no missing rubrics or situations where your child has failed to copy down the homework assignment from the board. For 100% virtual learning, there is no need to take things to and from school, which means no lost jackets or moldy fruit. But for students with ADHD or other “executive functioning challenges,” is this really the utopia we’ve been waiting for?